Buffy Gets Animated!
by magical realism
Summary: Willow casts a spell that converts the entire Buffyverse into a cartoon world! Of course, campy plot ensues as the Scoobies split into pairs to save the day.
1. The gameplan

Willow sat down in the middle of the magic shop, crossing her legs Indian style. She laid out all the materials for what she needed to complete. The perfect spell. Okay, maybe not perfect, but pretty close. It would do.

"Book!" Willow held out her hand and her whole body hummed in a special magic-doing way. An old leather book flew off the shelf and skidded to a halt right in front of her.

"And the last piece of the puzzle falls into place." She cracked a small smile.

"_Let whimsy rule all. Let the drawings on the wall... _Aaah!" A few more books flew off the walls, and then the bookcases started crashing down around her. Giles was going to kill her. In broad daylight! With a blunt object!

Obviously, she had messed up the spell. But she didn't have time to ponder what she did wrong, because suddenly the whole world started to spin, making her nauseous. The blurry shop around her seemed to be drained of color, and then, everything faded to black with a small "click."

Willow awoke with a small nudge, feeling groggy and a little sick. The rest of the Scoobs were standing around her, looking even more bewildered than her. Something was a little... off about her surroundings.

It was as if she was inside a Saturday morning cartoon. Or a comic-strip or something.

"I knew it! I knew she had something to do with this!" Cried Dawn, her cheeks bright red, like two beets. It was actually kind of funny.

"Dawn, let's not... jump to conclusions." Giles reminded Dawn, taking off his glasses and cleaning them again, except for the fact that the lenses seemed to have disappeared, his cloth went right through them.

"Of course, why would that not happen. I seem to be blind as a bunny." Giles said under his breath.

"Blind as a bunny? Blind bunnies aren't real, right? Right Xander?" Anya worried aloud. Willow and Dawn both shared a look.

"Right sweetie, it's a expression." Xander confirmed, helping Willow up. "So, what happened, Will?"

"I, I don't know. I was doing a spell, and, and then I wasn't."

"I knew it!" Cried Dawn, pointing her finger.

"Get that little dagger away from me!" Yelled Xander, moving to the other side of the room. Willow immediately staggered before Giles walked over to prop her up.

"You seem to have, um, well, stars above your head." Giles informed her. Willow forgot her queasiness and ran over to the mirror. Sure enough, a tornado-like caricature with stars in the middle that often appeared when a cartoon character was recently injured was swirling above her head.

"Ha! Classic." Xander giggled. Giles shot him a look.

"He's right." Dawn shrugged.

"I'm here! I'm here!" Buffy said, entering the Magic Box with Tara and Spike in tow. "So, any explanation? Or is it just the three of us?" She inquired, slightly miffed at suddenly becoming a cartoon character. Which is understandable.

"No, no, it's all of us." Said Giles rather grimly as he shared a look with Tara, immediately cluing her in.

"Well? Are we in some kind of acid dream?" Buffy snapped, her cheeks turning redder by the second.

"Oh, no. You would be able to tell." Spike informed the group, who really did not ask.

"Then what? Did I suddenly inhale all pot that ever existed?" She snapped.

"Oh, no. You would be able to tell." Tara offered in a soothing tone. "I-I mean, it's obviously just a spell done a bit carelessly." She covered, averting her eyes.

Giles was rummaging with the pile of books that had fallen at Willow's feet, he found the leather bound one and flipped to the page.

"Willow! You shouldn't have tried this spell without supervision, it's very old and dangerous." He used is shame-on-you voice, which was never appreciated.

"Yes, we as a group usually have seldom to do with the very old and dangerous." Buffy quipped, earning a smirk from Xander.

"So, old wiser and holier-than-thou, how do we reverse my unsupervised carelessness?" Said Willow hotly.

"Okay, game plan time!" Buffy declared, and the group gathered around.

"It's my favorite time." Xander whispered to Anya.

"Giles, you're info. Go!"

"Well, since we are, for some odd reason, cartoons, there isn't really a text for this kind of stuff. But the usual way to reverse the spell is for the caster and the last person they had contact with to make a certain kind of concoction Very dark stuff." He said.

Buffy's eyes bulged. Literally out of her head, the group broke out into a fit of cackles.

"Okay. Xander you and Dawn go outside, see how much of Sunnydale the spell affected. Giles, get things to concoct. Okay?"

Xander and Dawn nodded.

"Well, some of this stuff isn't in our inventory." Giles said. Anya broke into a smile.

"Because we sold it all. We ran out because we sold it all. For money." she was grinning ear-to-ear. And then the smile stretched past her face.

"That'll take some getting used to." Xander laughed, bemused.

"I-I may have some of this stuff." Tara said, leaning over and studying the book.

"Okay, you go get the stuff, Tar."

"What should I do?" Asked Spike, not used to being forgotten.

"Uh, go with Tara." Said Buffy, shrugging and ignoring Willow and Tara's shared nervous glance. Buffy really hoped she was conveying the right amount of nonchalance.

"And me?" Asked Anya, pointing to herself.

"Help Giles." Buffy said.

"And you?" Dawn asked.

"I'm the boss, the over-see-er. The big kahuna. Other boss-like words." Buffy explained.

"Well, you're little more important than that." Willow reminded her. "You were the last person I had contact with."

"Oh? Oh! Okay. Well jobs are assigned. What are you waiting for?" She ordered.

"I was waiting for the break on three." Anya muttered under her breath as they dispersed.

"Look at it this way, it's a botched spell, not an apocalypse." Xander put his hand on Buffy's shoulder.

"It's the little things." She smiled wryly. He patted her shoulder once and led Dawn out of the shop after Tara and Spike.


	2. Xander and Dawn

Dawn and Xander sauntered out of the magic box, enjoying the trippy streets of Sunnydale. They didn't enjoy noticing the lack of civilians screaming because they had woken up as Looney Tunes.

"People should be more freaked." Xander thought aloud. Dawn nodded in agreement. Xander hung back a couple steps, really taking in his cartoon friend. He often found himself looking at Dawn when he should have been looking at Buffy, Willow, or Giles. Or Anya. She just seemed a lot more real than his super-powered comrades. She seemed like a normal girl, unwillingly thrown into danger. She seemed like a teenager in way over their head. Xander was just glad someone else felt like that.

"So, whatdya say? Whole town?" Dawn punctuated the silence with the million dollar question. It was Xander's turn to nod in agreement.

"Wanna keep walking, though? We could walk over those hills that can and will go on forever. Or we could go chat with those birds with human eyes that are probably anthropomorphic." He offered. Dawn giggled in a kind of girlish way, immediately catching herself and trying to gain composure. Not because she liked him or anything. Just cause it was polite. But she couldn't help but stare at his swelling expression, she could tell he enjoyed making her laugh. Dawn was practically jumping for joy that _anyone_ wanted to hang out with her. Her-her. Not Key-her or Sister-her or Burden-her. The two strolled leisurely and actually did stop to have a friendly chat with the birds about weather and migration habits and which bird-jokes were humorous and which were in poor taste.

"Ya know, Buffy just sent us out here because she doesn't want us getting in the way." Dawn mused, sticking her thumbs in her jean pockets.

"I'm used to it." Xander replied, stopping to kick a small pebble.

"Just cuz you're not a slayer or a war-lock-"

"Or a watcher or a vampire." Xander reminded her. Dawn giggled.

"Doesn't mean you can't help!" Dawn feebly tried to justify their boot from the project.

"I am something. Apparently I'm the heart. Which, as none say, is the hardest job of all." Xander spat, with the familiar edge of mock in his voice.

"At least you _get _to be a vital organ." Complained Dawn.

"Oh, I'm not. They make fake hearts now. I've read about it. Well, I read the title of the article about it." He admitted, looking away. He really regretted ruining the mood with his self-hating shtick.

"Oh, to be a graduate and not have to read." Mused Dawn breathlessly. Xander smiled, she was such a good sport.

"You don't have to be a high-school graduate to be dumb. If you learn one lesson from me, let it be that."

There was a comfortable beat of silence.

"And when did you start hating school?" He wondered, remembering all her geek-fests with Willow and Tara over things he didn't care to remember or try to pronounce.

"Around the time I realized I could be doing more important stuff." Said Dawn, picking some dirt from the inside of her thumbnail.

"Like what?" He really did not want to be the one suffering a beat-down when news got back to Buffy that he was encouraging slacker mentality.

"I don't know... Carpentry?" She laughed, elbowing him playfully. He laughed along with her, mentally picturing her in a little yellow hard hat that kept slipping past her eyes. Cute.

"Seriously Dawnie, I wanna know!" He chided.

"Like... fighting evil. There's a lot of stuff I can't prevent, ya know? Like divorce or tumors or big green portals and the people who jump into them. But as long as I can prevent blood-suckage, then blood-suckage I will prevent." Dawn averted her eyes, choosing to stare at the colorful trees they kept passing that had definitely not existed pre-spell.

"Noble." He said after a minute, deciding not to make the sympathetic _aww_ sound that Willow and Tara often did. He didn't want to push her on the issue either.

"You're doing it too." She reminded him.

"I was coerced. Originally."

"Like I wasn't? Hello, sister/slayer? And you're occasionally useful."

"Oh thanks. Seriously, that's one of the nicest things a Summers girl has ever said to me." This elicited a loud laugh from Dawn.

"Hey, look! Wanna stop in there?" He pointed to a medium sized sandwich shop where tinny music was playing. Black musical notes floated into the air and evaporated. "I bet they have comically over-sized subs that we can eat in one bite."

"What? No! … Yes."

So they walked into the restaurant, the AC was full-blast but their cartoon bodies prevented them from sprouting goose-bumps. Even in this melty, mind-screw of a universe, fun was possible.


End file.
